


What's One More Decade

by Pookaseraph



Series: Another Decade [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Trope Bingo Round 2, accidentally sorta soul bonded a bit, but not soulmates just soul bonded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:17:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the victory of the PPDC, Hermann and Newton try to go about their lives... but after a decade together, and a few seconds in each other's brains, that's a little more complicated than it might seem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's One More Decade

**Author's Note:**

> So this... I intend(ed) it to be a submission on my trope bingo for 'soul bond' but I have no idea if it's sufficiently soulbondy, soooo whatever.

As _Newton_ delighted in telling him whenever the matter came up, he believed that Hermann had no sense of poetry and wonder. Hermann had no trouble agreeing with that assessment, he never had, he found poetry vapid and anything that resembled it to be nothing more than pretentious and self-important lies to say things that either did not need saying, or could have been described far more economically. Poetry was unnecessary.

This simple fact was one of the many reasons he was distressed by his decision to be out in the middle of Hong Kong, in the Bone Slums, not _ten feet_ from a dead, quasi-fetal, Kaiju; he found the thing beautiful, a mass of organic riddles waiting to be solved...

That was Newton talking, Hermann knew that; one of the best documented elements of the use of the Pons and the neural link was that there were certain ghost sensations, ghost impressions, that lingered for weeks, if not months, after a Drift that did not originate from the host body. There were thousands of theories for why, but Hermann's working theory from his own experiences Drifting with Newton was that something in Newton's personality had... impressed upon him, and would linger for some time.

 _Poets_ , and people with disgustingly poetic dispositions like Newton, often considered it to be in keeping with an even older poetic thought, soul bonds, soulmates... it was counter-factual. Of course, Hermann knew that the wonder and _glory_ at the Kaiju carcass was not at all his own. He had no idea why he was out in this weather, when they should be celebrating the victory of their entire species, when his knee - his entire leg, really - was aching from the weather and the frantic pace that he had kept in the last seventy-two hours... and the last ten years.

Newton was shouting, this way and that, taking over the harvesting of every last scrap of the two Kaiju that had fallen in Hong Kong, and if Hermann was not mistaken, the man was taking a majority of Hannibal Chao's collection into his own possession. No doubt they would be making a trip to Massachusetts as soon as inhumanly possible... if MIT even wanted the man back...

Who was Hermann kidding? He and Newton both would have their pick of jobs now, and perhaps even some government research grants now that the Kaiju threat would be considered extinct. Poor Newton would have to find a real specialization...

In truth, Hermann was well aware of the fact that Newton would be reverse-engineering Anteverse tech until they were both grey.

He was unsure why he placed them together like that.

After a few moments of throbbing pain, he had his hand to his head, massaging his left temple, and when he glanced over he caught Newton bent over, massaging the muscles above the kneecap of his own leg - a familiar gesture caught in a strange mirror. The pain was bad enough that Newton hobbled - although there was nothing functionally wrong with his legs - before he picked up some sort of bench/workstation, very likely unsanitary, and rotated it so the work surface was not up, and then he sat. There was more than enough room for Hermann to do the same, and the space was left in silent invitation.

A war of necessity against annoyance raged in Hermann's mind for several seconds before he took his own seat, the two of them twins, massaging out an ache that only one of them felt for organic reasons. "We're rock stars."

Hermann rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, and I have millions of data points broadcast from Gipsy during her time in the Breach before her destruction that I could be analyzing were I not out here in this freezing rain while you mutilated a pair of carcasses for what I can only assume to be perverse sport."

"Your numbers can wait, Hermann, the organic cannot."

Newton was not wrong, the preservation of Kaiju remains was a topic Hermann was - woefully - intimately aware of from almost ten years of work with the other man. If there was any chance of the Anteverse reestablishing any sort of connection, a fundamental understanding of the organics of the Kaiju and the math and physics of the Breach would be required. He doubted either of them would be straying far from those roots.

"MIT called," Newton said, stretching out his leg as though trying to ease away the pains that Hermann knew would not simply go away, no matter how stretched and limber the leg was. "They want their rock star back."

Hermann gave a snort, of course. Newton had been a well-respected professor, well-liked by students, who he was rarely older than, and a gifted researcher, well documented by his four PhDs. Hermann had never been particularly well-liked as an educator, although his research had always been top-notch. "Father called."

They never talked about it, certainly Hermann had always suspected that Newton knew; it would have been hard not to overhear the heated portions of conversation that passed between Drs. Gottlieb Sr. and Jr. concerning the topic of Walls versus Jaegers.

Newton's head cocked to the side, almost as though listening; Hermann supposed he must be trying to get a feel for the new information between them, one of the thousands of undiscussed elephants thrown into the room after they had Drifted together. "I don't suppose it was to thank you for helping to save humanity."

There was no reason for an answer, it would be extraneous, and so Hermann did not provide it.

"I think I'm going to miss the ocean the most," Newton said, when no comment was forthcoming.

"Cambridge is barely inland from the Harbor."

"Well, sure, but that's the Atlantic. I meant the Pacific. It's been our home for almost ten years. PPDC and proud." Newton pumped his fist like an idiot, not in keeping with his genius-level intellect, but in keeping with his juvenile behavior outside of the realm of science. "Come with me."

Newton, damn him, no doubt knew that Hermann would be tempted. "No."

"We could share an office."

" _Absolutely_ no."

"A floor?"

They probably would give the man a floor, maybe even a wing, it would be revolting. He thought about returning home, to his father who would somehow claim moral victory for building a wall to hide behind over a proactive fight, dedicated inquiry, and empirical success. "An entire floor," he agreed. "And not a small floor, either."

Three days later the formally-informal offer of a tenured position in the College of Mathematics came by international courier while they were arguing on the packing of remains and the preservation of various mathematical work that Hermann had left over their collective chalkboards.

"I think my favorite part of belonging to an international coalition with minimal data security oversight is we just get to box it up and ship it out," Newton said. _Thankfully_ he was at least boxing up the parts and the papers in different boxes, which was more than he would have thought possible from the man a year ago.

Hermann rolled his eyes while pulling out the contract, giving it a meager once-over, and signing his name to the paper before sending the courier off on his way. Done, that was done. He wasn't entirely sure why he'd agreed, but the idea of being apart from the idiot he'd shared a jaunt into a Kaiju brain with seemed... difficult.

"I need to finish my dissections," Newton said, a few minutes later. "I won't be leaving for at least a week."

The idea of spending that week here, in his old life, rather than away, in his new life - his post-Rift, post-Kaiju, post-Pentecost life - seemed stifling. "I'm leaving for Boston tomorrow."

"Remember, half that floor is mine!"

When Hermann arrived, some over-eager puppy of a graduate student was assigned to escort him. He was, in a word, obsequious, and yet somehow failed to grasp that Hermann could not keep up with his frantic walking pace - in spite of the very obvious use of cane - and could not, in fact, utilize the stairs with any certainty. He found himself missing Newton, who had in their years together developed a sort of frantic orbital movement, their gravitational push-pull keeping them in a stable orbit where Newton's movements never impacted Hermann's forward trajectory, and yet kept Newton's boundless kinetic energy in a sort of check.

Their 'floor' was impressive, even when compared to the scale of the Shatterdome. There were five offices, a lecture hall, three classrooms, and a half-dozen lab spaces, some larger than others; clearly some of them were supposed to be given over to whichever graduate students he invariably would acquire no matter how odious he attempted to make his personality, but the largest space, the one that had a reasonable amount of light, but shut off areas that would best preserve the light-sensitive innards of the Kaiju was... far more generous than he and Newton had when they were in Hong Kong.

He set up his computer terminals, he placed his chalkboards, he unpacked the meager offering of journals that he had collected while the world burned... but it didn't feel right. Hermann ended up at the store picking up a roll of electrical tape and used it, with some difficulty, to outline exactly which side of the lab space was his, and which he would graciously allow Newton to maintain... like a six year old.

Hermann then realized that living in your office was frowned upon, and that he had grown accustom to living in a ten by ten foot bunker of a room, and that he had failed to secure an apartment. That sort of ridiculously impulsive behavior was something that he expected from Newton, not himself, and he frowned at the computer terminal before he composed an email to Newton from his PPDC email to Newton's personal and PPDC email, asking where he'd gotten an apartment.

Newton responded, mere minutes later: _Dude, it's like right on the Harbor. Show ID at the front desk and you can pick up a key._

He checked the time, four in the afternoon - four in the morning in Hong Kong. _Go to bed, idiot_.

The front desk did have a key waiting for him, although the rooms themselves were... spacious to the point of agoraphobia inducing for a man who had spent ten years in a metal box, but with little to no furniture. Still, he showered, and made his way down to the Harbor, and went hunting for something to eat. He ended up with a pizza from BHOP, with a surprising amount of olives on it that he didn't remember ordering. He decided to blame Newton for that.

A week without that man buzzing in his ear, and yet Hermann found himself with a thousand little things that either reminded him of Newton, or he did because he knew Newton would like it. He slowly stocked their pantry to their mutual food preferences, a trip to the liquor store found him some appropriately micro-brewed German beers, and Hermann found himself attempting to recall whether or not he had ever actually liked fresh produce, or if he was so used to the salty, canned commissary crap that his taste buds had been permanently soured.

It took Newton almost a week and a half to finally arrive, which he did in a flurry of fanfare and grad students, who set up his various - disgusting - specimens in the areas that Hermann had meticulously prepared for their arrival. His arms were bare, in a shorter dress shirt, with a frightfully skinny tie. His jacket was slung over the back of a chair, and he was...

Hermann had missed him.

When the specimens were all deposited and the students all gone, Newton leaned back against one of the tables, back arched, arms tense from where they gripped the edge, waiting. Hermann took the steps over to where Newton was coiled, and after a moment to hesitated and second guessing and doubt, he reached out and drew the man into a hug. Tension wire cut, Newton's arms slung around his chest and pulled Hermann tight enough to rob him of his breath, and likely his dignity.

They lingered, longer than expected, before Hermann finally pushed himself away. "Yes, yes, did Marshal Hansen finally shove you out the door?"

Newton shrugged. "They got funds for a slightly more orderly shutdown, but with no Jaegers and no Kaiju, they're pretty much just letting the clock run out."

Hermann saw the exact moment that Newton started to think about the war clock, and the frantic pressure it had placed them both under, the way his mind closed off, and he needed to push away. "Your eye--?"

Just after Newton had drifted with the partial Kaiju brain, his left eye had been a bloody mess of exploded vessels, it looked much the same, with perhaps only a small amount of red having gone out of the sclera. "Lost some peripheral vision," Newton answered, indicating the left with a wagged finger. "CT came back normal, otherwise."

"Mine as well." But, as Hermann had told the doctor who had performed it: 'you can't see idiot on one of those'... it was strange to realize how little bite it had had when he'd said it. "I suppose you're stuck with me."

"Another decade, at least," Newton answered, as though this weren't something momentous to proclaim, that they would continue to work together with no common apocalypse to fight, as though Hermann would put up with Newton's music, and Newton would put up with Hermann's seething, as though a dividing line down the center of the room was in any way appropriate after...

Hermann straightened his back and tensed his jaw. It wasn't as though he was allowing Newton's unorganized chaos to touch _his_ work space. "Yes, another decade."

*

The Spring Semester unfolded around Hermann and Newton, Summer and Fall schedules were figured, newer grad students started to approach them, _both_ of them, as advisers, they still bickered, Newton still listened to his music too loudly, they had a disgustingly large amount of Kaiju parts around the lab...

It was comfortable.

When he tried to move out, Newton had just said he was welcome to stay as long as he wanted, and Hermann couldn't actually find it in him to leave. Perhaps it was some elaborate form of Stockholm Syndrome, either that or he was getting used to Newton's cooking. His _cooking_.

Newton Geiszler, a man who had entered MIT before most minds grasped long division, and a man who had graduated with a PhD and begun teaching before most had their undergraduate degrees, also knew how to _cook_. Being German, the man also had some sort of direct line to 'just how mother used to cook' - which he knew was actually how Newton's father cooked...

"It's art," Newton had explained, while the two of them were picking through the food he'd made for them. "You know, that thing you don't believe in."

"I _believe_ in it, I simply don't think it has anything worthwhile to _say_ ," Hermann had snapped back.

And now they were three weeks after that, and the two of them were arguing over the final draft of the eighteenth paper they'd completed since Newton had arrived, picking over food Hermann had cooked last night. Their composition method generally involved one of them typing, while the other one had journals splayed out on every available work-surface while working on a real-time rendering of their various simulations. They then swapped work spaces, and started to yell at each other's shoddy work, before finally settling on a finished product.

"Well, it's not everyday you revolutionized predictive modeling," Hermann said. _This_ particular paper was primarily Hermann's - with Newton receiving only 'special thanks' rather than co-authorship.

"We should celebrate."

That was how they ended up at some ridiculously overpriced restaurant on the Harbor, the two of them having what most people would call a 'working dinner', but to be honest it didn't follow their usual course - recently they managed to not yell at each other in public... quite as much - but they had a tablet between them, passing physics/math information about the Breach and Anteverse back and forth, attempting to understand the world that the Kaiju had come from if it ever tried to contact them again.

Newton, as usual, had some ridiculous theory that had no mathematical support and he would no-doubt spend the next year pursuing; Hermann was enthralled by the math, everything from the differing gravities to the the readings when the Breach had opened - both sides - that could hold keys to interstellar wormhole tunneling.

Newton was on his fourth beer, Hermann his second, with Newton's sleeves rolled up showing off those ridiculous tattoos that made Newton look like a combination Yazuka thug and Kaiju groupie. Hermann found he almost found it endearing now. They were the oddest matched pair...

Hermann didn't know when he'd started to consider them a pair.

After dinner, they walked, mostly aimless, generally towards home, Newton far more sedate than usual, willing to let the usual vitriol that Hermann had for his work simply bounce off of him.

"Are those _Kaiju_ tattoos?"

Hermann knew a fight when he heard it coming. He was _well_ aware of the tone that was the prelude to someone deciding to take a swing, and his body was on high-alert instantly. Newton, as usual, completely missed the nuance.

"Oh? Yes. Not all of them, of course, but some of the most historically notable, the most awesome." Newton then set about pointing to one of his many tattoos.

For all Newton sometimes complained that he could not take Hermann anywhere, the man was completely tone-deaf when it came to Kaiju. "Newton, really." And he put a hand on Newton's back, trying to urge him towards home.

"Hermann, how many times do I have to tell you? It's _Newt_."

Of course, that was about when the man who had asked the instigating question chose to grab Newton around the wrist and tug him forward.

"I don't think you understand," Newton began one of his rambles. "Yes, they're terrifying, awe-inspiring, motivational... we're talking about tons of raw and animalistic creatures, whose complex thought processes are largely beyond our ability to comprehend, staring into the abyss of an alien consciousness who..."

Hermann realized that this was the moment where he should actually interject, perhaps keep Newton from getting his head banged in... certainly if there was any chance Hermann would feel it as well.

"Excuse me." Hermann placed his cane against the man's chest. "How close have you ever been to a Kaiju?"

The man backed away a step. "Uh..."

"His man, and I, were in Hong Kong on the day the Breach was closed. He came _feet_ from being eaten by Otachi." Hermann took a hesitant step forward, cane digging into the man's chest now. "And with his help, the Jaeger strike team sealed the Breach for good. His bizarre awe-terror concerning Kaiju is not for you to judge, as you do not understand it, you cannot appreciate it, and that man is worthy of nothing but your deepest respect." He gave one final little shove with his cane, before setting it back to the ground, feeling on firmer ground after that.

Newton gave his own little tug, and was released, only to straighten his shirt, but leave his sleeves rolled up. "Hermann, I'm surprisingly touched."

Hermann didn't answer, only turned back to the path towards their shared apartment.

"You get it though, right?"

"I have little choice in the matter," Hermann answered. "Childhood admiration of our idols rarely stands up to the scrutiny of adulthood."

For Hermann, the point was definitely aimed at his father, a man of brilliance and genius who had been against the Jaeger program nearly from the day the third Kaiju had emerged from the Breach and humanity realized that the Kaiju would not be a singular occurrence. For Hermann, it was the day he made his own stand against his father, and against the looming apocalypse.

"Thank you." Newton's words were surprisingly ungrudging. "I forget not everyone knows and understands my history with Kaiju."

"Only you would be egomaniacle enough to think that everyone should bow down before the great Dr. Newton Geiszler," Hermann shot back. For some reason he was always incapable of accepting anything from Newton that resembled admiration.

Of course, Newton was long familiar with that. "I was thinking of getting another tattoo: Kodachi."

"Kodachi?" Hermann considered. "That is not its name! You cannot name the quasi-fetal Kaiju we drifted with. Mr. Choi is responsible for all naming of all Kaiju. The man has that responsibility, you cannot simply _decide_ , because you were present at its birth, that you can name it anything at all."

"But... Otachi... Kodachi..." Newton made a pair of hand gestures, indicating something larger - a sword, Hermann knew that - and something smaller, the kodachi.

He rolled his eyes. "Really, Newton."

"I'll have Tendo name it when we're there next week."

Hermann came up short, pausing. "Since when are we going anywhere next week?"

"We got an invitation," Newton answered. "From Tendo and Herc. It's a memorial slash award ceremony slash drunk off."

"And you didn't think to actually mention that we had both received an invitation, and you had accepted, sometime in the last few weeks when we were engaged in an unending stream of bickering not entirely dissimilar to almost every other time in our adult lives," Hermann found himself ranting, as usual, because somehow Newton proved himself to be unendingly frustrating and...

"I..." Newton blinked, confused. "Sorry. I forgot you..." He made an awkward gesture between his head and Hermann's. "I put it on the refrigerator?"

When they got upstairs, Hermann did find that the invitation was on the refrigerator, where he no-doubt passed by it on at least one occasion daily. He then squinted at it.

_Drs. Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb_

"Why did we only get one invitation?" Hermann squinted at it, annoyed, waiting for his answers.

Newton looked over at him, confused. "We... live together, work together, have..." He again flicked his finger between their minds, no doubt referencing their time in the Pons that had long since passed. "Hermann, I can tell when your leg is aching; you can tell when I'm having a looming rant and ramble of borderline... things. You can't tell me there's not at least some reasoning behind us getting one invitation."

The man, damn him, had a point. "Fine."

"I asked Tendo. If you want, you can get your father to pin a medal on you and talk about your innovation, forward thinking, and tenacity."

Every word of it grudging, no doubt.

On the other hand... "No, I think I want him to pin a medal on _you_ and say the same. You would frustrate him endlessly."

"Both of us?" Newton suggested.

Best of both worlds. Yes. That would do nicely.

"Do you even have a place on your body to tattoo another Kaiju?" Hermann asked, setting aside the argument of the minute for the one that had been abandoned in mid-course.

"Some on the back," Newton answered, and then shrugged. "You could join me."

"There is nothing else in the world I would like less than to commemorate the moment when the two of us found ourselves, forced my necessity, to share a mind with a three-quarters dead, Kaiju." He then crossed his arms, uncrossed them, frowned at Newton, and then made a fairly theatrical huff.

Not any time soon.

Newton, somehow, seemed to know exactly what he was thinking, and smirked.

"The first tattoo's always rough. Second tattoo is the time to get more elaborate."

"THERE WILL BE NO SECOND TATTOO!"

"But there will be a first?"

"You cannot bastardize induction to guilt-trip me into a tattoo, Newton."

Hermann couldn't believe he had agreed to another decade with this man, this _completely infuriating_ man that he was apparently going to spend another decade of his life with.

What could possibly have been going through his mind when he'd thought that was a good idea?

Probably Newton.

Hermann sighed and massaged his temple, pushing away the throbbing headache that Newton was working on. For some reason they ended up on the couch, watching old anime and drinking beer. They had eight doctorates between them, and Hermann was squinting at subtitles nursing a headache with Newton trying to massage away the ache that Hermann had developed just above his knee.

A _decade_ of this.

Might not be tragic.

**Author's Note:**

> I have signed up to participate in Jaegercon Bingo over on tumblr. Because I'm sort of obsessively neat over how my fics are categorized, I will ONLY be posting them over there until I sort out how I want to archive them on AO3. If you want to follow my progress, feel free to follow me, and/or check in with my tag now and again. These fics WILL end up on AO3 eventually, just not right away.
> 
> [Pookaseraph's Jaegercon Bingo Tag](http://pookaseraph.tumblr.com/tagged/jaegercon-bingo).


End file.
